Refit Costs

People who are interested in cruising are often curious about how much it costs to refit (and maintain) a boat, and how much it costs to cruise. Oftentimes the answer on forums is “As much as you have” which frankly, isn’t particularly helpful. Yes, some people do it on a shoestring. For others it truly is “as much as they have.” But finding hard numbers that can be used to get a ballpark idea is difficult.

This page records how much we spent to refit a Bristol 29.9 to get her ready for cruising. It doesn’t track every single penny, but it covers the major items. We did the majority of the work ourselves, but I’ve noted where the cost included professional labor. Based on the labor costs for the engine and standing rigging, I can confidently say that if we had hired all of the work out it would have easily added another 30% to the cost, if not more.

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15 thoughts on “Refit Costs”

I enjoyed your page and all the details you went into. I’m a 48 yo male, grew up on my dad’s 36 ftTripp designed Choe Lee built sloop out of noank, ct. I love sailing and am looking to purchase a 29.9 and go sailing lol. Please keep your progress noted on your page. Best regards, Dave

Thanks, Dave. Your dad’s boat sounds like it was great! We’ll definitely be keeping this page up to date. I’ve always wished there was more info out there about ballpark expenses for this size boat, so I figured maybe it could help someone else. Best of luck on the search for your 29.9! Kimberly

Hi, I notice that your safety gear does not include a liferaft. As we are tooling up for a similar trip, I’m shopping for our safety gear and hemming and hawing on the idea of a liferaft. I’m interested in hearing more about your decision to do without.

Hi Thom – not a bad idea for a blog post! For us it boiled down to how much room a liferaft would take up 24/7 for the handful of days in a year where it would conceivably be needed, and also whether we really needed one for the kind of cruising we’re doing. We decided that for now we can do without – we’re not so far offshore that we’re all alone for hundreds of miles, and our passages are short enough that we can get a pretty reliable weather forecast so we can choose our window. I read somewhere that you can rent life rafts , so I think if we ever decided to cross the Atlantic to Europe (highly unlikely) we would simply go that route. Kimberly